I occasionally ask myself why many pilots fail to check the Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) before departing on a cross country flight. Items that may be crucial to safety will be listed, such as if the Instrument Landing System (ILS) is on the fritz or if obstruction lighting on tall antennas are out of service. It is not a mistake entirely made by students, but more often by airline and corporate pilots. Lighting outages are a usual occurrence on NOTAMs, but now for the not so obvious, the “PPR.”

If the airport is going to be performing maintenance on the longest runway on Tuesday from 1300Z to 2030Z, and your Boeing 737 has a maximum load, then dispatch or the station manager will be requesting the 10,000 ft. runway instead of the available 6,000 ft. one, especially during summer months when aircraft performance is at its worst. I hope they checked the NOTAMs other wise they could be waiting on the run-up pad for up to an hour before a departure can be authorized. Below is what is done when these circumstances may exist.

When airports close critical runways for maintenance, a NOTAM will be issued in one of two formats.

• A hard closure is not issued often. This is used when a runway will remain closed during specified times and can not be reopened for any reason. An example of this could be when there are many workers in the area performing critical maintenance on the runway, possibly under the runway where it would be a great inconvenience and take an exceedingly long time to clear the area and perform FOD sweeps by Operations.
• A soft closure is the most common type of closure. When grass is being cut, and runway lighting is being replaced by a modest number of workers, the runway may be used for operational necessity if the airline gives airport authorities their required notice stated in the NOTAM (one hour is the norm), which is referred to as a: PPR (Prior Permission Required). This allows the maintenance crew and operations enough time to clear the runway of all men and equipment. After the aircraft departs, the runway is re-closed. If the airline chooses to disregard the NOTAM or simply forgets, they risk waiting for up to an hour or until airport operations gives ATCT control of the runway.